


Finished Business

by HectorRashbaum (FifteenDozenTimes)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-01
Updated: 2008-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/HectorRashbaum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owen copes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finished Business

Jack didn't say anything until the day Ianto came in late. Because while it was weird as Hell when he started wearing his hair messier, weirder _still_ when he came in one day in a t-shirt and jeans of all things, it wouldn't kill him to loosen up a little.

But...late? Ianto, who'd spent the first week of employment waiting outside because he showed up half an hour early and Jack wanted to see if he'd keep it up, who had a nasty habit of telling everyone they needed to be somewhere twenty minutes before they actually did because he "can't stand waiting around forever"...coming in late.

Didn't add up.

Nor did the bags under his eyes, the slouching, or – most alarming of all – the complete lack of coffee in the Hub fifteen minutes after his arrival.

He dropped himself into the chair at Owen's old desk in an unsettlingly familiar way, and buried his head in his hands in an unsettlingly familiar way, and – there was no way.

"Ianto," he could just barely hear Gwen say, tentatively, "are you wearing – is that – your cologne, smells like what Owen used to wear."

Good thing Jack wasn't down there – he wasn't sure he could resist a comment about how if anyone would know, Gwen would. Hoping like fuck he was wrong, that Ianto was just loosening up a little, Jack called him up (and the way he jumped at the sharp "Ianto!" just about confirmed one suspicion – he was hungover).

\----------

"Late night?"

Ianto just nodded – a "yes, sir" would've made Jack feel better – and leaned against the desk, still with that uncharacteristic slouch.

"That's not like you."

"Thought I'd mix it up a bit."

There was something odd in his...not his voice, but the words themselves; the accent not quite _right_, the intonation off just enough to add another mark to Jack's mental checklist of "oh shit, not good".

"Right. Don't want life to get to dull, Owen."

"No, 'cause – er. I'm...Owen?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "That was a little too easy. Next time I'll wait till the hangover's gone, catch you when you're on your toes."

"I don't know - "

"Oh come on. You're not even _subtle_."

"Well...Ianto's hard to maintain. All that tidiness, punctuality, this really atrocious hair..."

Jack sighed and rubbed his temples. He didn't make enough for this. And, what, was he gonna need a priest now, get an exorcism? God help him.

"Then why him?"

"That one, you'll have to believe me when I say I don't know."

_Really_ didn't make enough. "What?"

"Well, like – I was dead. Blah blah blah darkness, nothing, you know. And then I woke up."

"As Ianto."

"Yes. Rather cozy little flat he has, too."

"I kno – we need to figure out what to do."

"Er, let me stay?"

"That's just what we need, a friendly Torchwood ghost. And where does that leave Ianto?" Jack wanted to add "you complete _ass_", but bit down on it at the last second.

"Maybe we can share. If I figure out how."

"Right. And Gwen and I can bet on how long it'll take one of you to commit suicide. Owen? You're dead. Doubly dead. You really need to stop...being alive."

"And you're of course remembering it wasn't my choice either time."

"Get out. I'm gonna figure this out. And...don't do anything to that body."

"I was thinking of getting a tattoo, actually."

"Owen."

"Won't do a thing to your toy, Captain."

\----------

"He's entirely too calm about this."

Gwen shrugged, mouth too full of pizza to talk. Ianto/Owen was off somewhere, with a list of Owen's things Jack hadn't been able to find to dig up and put somewhere obvious. Might as well take advantage, right?

"Well," Gwen said after she'd swallowed. "He's had more time to get used to it, hasn't he?"

"I can't find anything useful. Any possession stories – not that I believe most of them – are...willful. And Owen says he doesn't know how it happened."

"Could be lying."

Jack picked at a few greasy pepperonis. "You think he would?"

"I – no. Maybe at one point, but not – no, I don't."

"Think it's the glove? Maybe I made him...immortal. Or - "

"Jack."

"I'm just covering all the options."

"It's probably unfinished business. Isn't that what it always is, in stories? He left something unfinished."

"He was around for weeks after he died! How much crap did he leave?"

"I don't know, Jack. I'm 'covering all the options'."

Jack sighed harshly. "I'm gonna go look again."

\----------

"Unfinished? Maybe it's Jack's stupid list."

"Don't be an ass, Owen. It's just an idea."

"Maybe I'm just not supposed to die, either of you think of that? Some fluke, not my time, whoopsie let's just knock you back any way we can."

Gwen leaned against the wall and waited until he was looking at her. "So was it Ianto's?"

"Ianto didn't die."

"And now you're being stupid, and an ass. Is he in there, Owen? He's not, is he – it's just you in there. Ianto's gone, isn't he?"

Owen, Ianto, whatever he was, just slammed the file drawer shut and stomped past her.

\----------

Owen had been around Torchwood long enough to know, or at least suspect, the body beneath the stone he was leaning against wasn't Tosh's. Not that it matter. Or, maybe it did, but if it did he was fucked. That was assuming he even had the right idea of unfinished business, and that Gwen was right about that being the problem, and – well, whatever.

"Maybe," he said, and he had to talk out loud because _fuck_ he hated cemeteries, the oppressive silence of the dead who had the sense to stay that way, and the darkness didn't exactly help, "it's me. Another thing that's my fault, that Owen Harper screwed up, right? Can't figure out how to die right. And of course you got it right on the first try, had to show me up. Or...something. Fuck. You should've said something, you know. I mean, I knew, it was obvious, but why couldn't you admit it? 'I just got shot', how hard is that? 'Bastard just blew a hole in my gut, I'll see you in Hell' would work. Fuck the rest of us, Tosh, you earned yourself ten minutes of selfishness.

"Except if you'd taken that, you wouldn't've really been Tosh, would you? They could've written that out here, couldn't they, 'noble to a fault, cared too much, died for a bunch of people who stomped all over her'. 'Beloved friend and daughter' my ass – well, no, but – suppose anything else would be too honest.

Owen sighed and stretched out a little, legs stiff and cramped. His ass – Ianto's ass, and what a change it was to _have_ an ass, the bastard – was going numb, and he had no idea what he was waiting for. When he said the right thing would he just...poof?

"Can't let go, can I? That's the problem, isn't it. You can't think about yourself for five seconds, I can't think about anyone else. 'Cause what the Hell am I doing, Tosh, when I keep doing this? So many people get hurt, and I – I didn't do it on purpose, you know. It was Jack, the first time, and this time – what was it? Why the Hell am I here and why the fuck is Ianto paying for it?"

No one answered him; he could feel a few tears and reasoned it away as Ianto's fault. The sky stretched out forever above him, blank and starless – nothingness. It was following him, stalking him. It had been his time, hadn't it? All the denial in the world couldn't change that after he died once, he kept dying. Fate hadn't ever really been on the table of things Owen believed him, but it was damn hard to deny now.

Owen set the flower – a geranium in a plain clay pot, didn't seem too cliché or over the top – he'd been holding down in front of the stone. If he had any reservations about the whole thing being too sappy, he could always write it off as the sort of thing Ianto'd do. He'd forgotten to bring something to dig with, though, and Ianto never would've forgotten that. Maybe some passing mourner would take pity on the poor girl whose only visitor was too much of an idiot to plant the stupid flower.

"Night, Toshiko."

\----------

Ianto showed up at the Hub early as usual the next morning. He'd woken up in front of Tosh's false grave, horribly unkempt, soaked in dew and smelling a bit too strongly of going-on-the-pull cologne. Not being prone to drunken blackouts, he assumed this was a Torchwood issue – and his suspiscions were mostly confirmed by the way first Jack, and then Gwen when she showed up, regarded him with such unease.

"I take it that's Ianto in there," Jack said to him, later that morning in the archives.

"Er, yes, sir. I take it one of you will explain all this to me at some point?"

"Isn't it more fun to guess?" Jack grinned at him, but it wasn't quite as careless as the usual "dashing hero" grin he sported, and Ianto just frowned after him when he walked away without another word.


End file.
